Guy Ritchie is back, sorta. After the gangbuster success of the Gangster flicks Snatch and Lock, Stock..., he missed critically and financially with the esoteric Revolver. With this film, he still is up to his usual visual tricks and colourful cast of denizens from the London criminal underground. This time a Russian billionaire footie-team owner (sound familiar?) aligns himself with an old-school member of the English organized crime club. Adventure ensues.

I'm not entirely sure what it is that doesn't work with this film, save for the fact that it all seems like it's trying too hard to be cool, and too little to be authentic. Awkward banter, slick Dut ch angles with pastel lighting make for what seems to be a debut film, not the work of an experienced director. There's a sense of needing to throw in as much as possible to make up for the redacted story line. It's also somewhat obvious that the film was going for a younger demographic, with offscreen violence taking the part of actual gore. Normally this type of stylization is welcome, but here it feels like a tease.

The ensemble comes together quite well, and it's certainly more accessible and enjoyable than the previous film. In the end, however, it feels like an overproduced single, lots of flash and slick production talent, but no soul or passion. It's more Pop than Rock, and with more grittiness, intensity and humour it could have made for a great flick.

The pitch is a simple one, "Paul Gross puts the Passion in Passchendaele!"

Rather than drawing from cinematic masterpieces like Paths of Glory, Gross instead turns to Pearl Harbour for his tale of love, loss and war. The Great War is little more than a backdrop for a silly story. Cliches rain like artillery, as we meet a soldier with "shell shock", a nurse who pricks herself with morphine to get by, and her brother, an asthmatic teen who wishes nonetheless to become a hero and fight for his country. Even the gruff old senior officer, token ethnic friend and yokel neighbors make an appearance (the fact that the xenophobic, hick Calgarian family is named "Harper" should not, I'd suggest, be written off as coincidence).

The film begins and ends with bombs and blood, but the middle 90 minutes is little more than romance novel fluff. Romantic horse rides show the rugged beauty of Alberta, as streams burble in sharp canyons and the two leads look off into the distance with a sense of yearning. The film takes a turn to the absolute ridiculous when the actual battle is fought, as all the characters (even the gruff soldier!) find their way to the same battle at the same time. The leads even find time to copulate to the backdrop of canon fire, with flares floating down, swimming sperm-like in the night sky while the jarring sound of Gross' sex-foley fights the gun fire and explosions of the surround sound mix.

What's most unfortunate is that the film makes the scope of this battle so much smaller, the heroism so much more diminished. The insanely trite, predictable conclusion is muddied by what I can only describe as the Via Delarosa part of the film, literally turning the film into some sort of macabre passion play. Finally, the klunky end titles indicate the sacrifice at Passchendaele ended up being (geographically, at least) for naught, with the land overtaken months later. In other words, it makes the whole endeavor feel both implausible and trivial.

Softening the impact of the historical battle while injecting movie-of-the-week romance, Gross has wasted a perfectly good war film by creating a perfectly awful adventure romance, one made more hateful by the fact that it sullies the memory of a vital time in our history nearly as badly as the historical abortion that was Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbour.

A "talking (while walking) head" doc where the filmmaker lets a number of pop and academic philosophers pontificate about life, the universe and everything while they row, promenade, ride in the back of cars, or simply meander around in circles. Loads of name dropping, from Plato to Deleuze, makes this feel far more like a drunken undergrad party than an actual insight into the philosophical process. There are moments of brightness, as the always engaging Cornell West bombards us with cultural references galore, and Zizek is his usual lispy, accented and erudite self, but the rest of the film feels indulgent, boring and dull. A disappointing, wasted opportunity.

Period horror set in the Finnish outlands? Sign me up! Heck, period and horror/suspense can work wonders (Le Pacte des Loups comes to mind). Sadly, Sauna is nothing but a cold shower, a murky, moist tale that feels like a truly bad X Files episode (complete with black oil!).

Think of the Seventh Seal meets a Troma flick, all with a menacing concrete Sauna at the heart of the tale. Come to think of it, Dead Birds was another horrible, boring period flick with schlocky scares entirely derived from cheesy makeup and ear piercing, shock noises.

Avoid.

This is Dog Day Afternoon meets Double Dragon, a postermodern pastiche that trascends its genre ghetto and provides a compelling, often astonishing viewing experience. Self-reflexive without being trite, beautifully shot and staged, this is a triumphant film, transcending all expectation.

The conceit, that the "real" Jean-Claude is caught up in a bank caper and is forced to suffer the consequences, is told through multi perspective flashbacks, with subtle (and not-so subtle) references to his career in action flicks abounding. Yet it is the unsettling moments, the moments of great pathos that are the most striking. Sure, JC gets to do his circus tricks, kicking a cigarette out of a mouth in one sweep, but it's the tour-de-force monologue about his life, failures, and shattered dreams that's perhaps the most lasting and poingnant part of the flick.

This is not all dreary introspection and cleverness for its own sake, this is a raucous good time, clever without being precocious. The opening fight scene, shot in a single, exhausting and exhaustive take, is quite incredible. Supported by fabulous character performances by the rest of the ensemble, it is JC that holds the film together on his broad yet aging shoulders. A smart, smart film with lots of kicking, punching, and shooting, all from the "muscles from Brussels" boy in Bloodsport - what's not to love!